Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly the government is embarrassed by its whole border protection regime and the fiascos we have seen under the Rudd government and the Gillard government. But that is no reason for this government deliberately withholding from this chamber answers to questions that have been properly asked. This chamber, as a representative of the Australian people, has the right to ask questions and to have those questions answered in a timely fashion. This government is so embarrassed by its border protection policy that it refuses to give any information which will make it even more embarrassed and which will cause the Australian people to be even more concerned about the fiasco that is border protection. I think all of that is fact. As Senator Abetz has very clearly and concisely pointed out, the questions are not all that difficult to answer. They concern information which any depart­ment of state would have practically at their fingertips. It is an abuse of the parliamentary process that this government deliberately withholds from the chamber information to which the Australian public is entitled.

I finish by referring to the Greens. You notice they scamper out of here every time they are called upon to keep the Labor Party honest, to keep—as their predecessor party, the Australian Democrats, once famously said—the bastards honest. We would expect the Greens, in keeping with the persona they put around to the Australian public as the upholders of everything that is good and moral about the parliamentary system, to do so. If you look back through their speeches in the times when the Liberal Party was in government, you would see how speeches that the parliament was entitled to information flowed off their tongues day after day. Yet here we have a process where, since 30 May last year, we have been attempting to get quite reasonable and easily obtained answers, and the Greens simply will not join with us in forcing their running mates in the Labor Party to provide the sort of information to which the Australian public is entitled. I say to those who might be listening that this again demonstrates the absolute hypocrisy of the Greens political party. They are not an independent political party; they are simply the ultra left wing of the Australian Labor Party. They always have been and those of us in this chamber know that. But I think the general public, who do not follow politics perhaps as closely as those of us in this chamber do, are now beginning to understand that in the Labor Party you have a right wing, you have a decreasing number of moderates and you have a left wing. You have people like Senator Sherry. Clearly he is the best minister that has been in this chamber from the Labor Party for many years, but he is a man who swung in the breeze by himself. He did not have a real faction to support him.